Amazon Gets Funky With Warner Music

(NEWSER) - Faced with crumbling CD sales and a digital market without enough oomph to compensate, online music sellers are slashing prices to lure buyers, the Boston Globe reports. “It is the schoolyard crack dealer approach,” one analyst said. Amazon MP3 offers sought-after albums for $3.99, and others for just $0.99. iTunes also offers specials for $6.99, and the trend is forcing physical record stores down as well. More»

New download service taps into unique demographic

(NEWSER) - Amazon.com’s digital music download store isn’t stealing iTunes customers—the six-month-old service is attracting a new consumer demographic, analysts say. A market research firm found that only 10 percent of Amazon MP3 customers surveyed in February previously bought iTunes music, AppleInsider reports. That’s a “healthy indication that the digital music customer pool can expand into new consumer groups,” an analyst says. More»

Label becomes fourth and final industry giant to ditch copy protection

(NEWSER) - Sony BMG will begin offering at least part of its music catalogue online without restrictive digital rights management mechanisms, Business Week reports. The decision comes after the other three major labels—Warner, EMI, and Universal—decided to ditch DRM in 2007, challenging Apple's 80% share of the legal music downloads market. More»

Promotion deal pushing music companies to switch to DRM-free MP3 format

(NEWSER) - Pepsi and Amazon aren’t music producers, but they may inspire large-scale changes in the industry, Reuters says. The two companies will launch a music download promotion of MP3 songs during the Super Bowl next year, a deal pushing music titans like Warner Music and Sony BMG to consider distributing songs in the same format, which bypasses digital rights management technology. More»

Songs now cost the same with or without copy protection

(NEWSER) - Apple has dropped the price of its Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free iTunes Plus songs from $1.29 to 99 cents, the same price at which it offers its copy-protected songs, news.com reports. The move looks like a response to the September 25th launch of Amazon's mp3 store, which offers DRM-free music for 89-99 cents a song. More»